Franklin D. Roosevelt loved Christmas. There were cocktails and stockings, and on Christmas Eve the president would read aloud from Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol.” But after World War II broke out with Hitler’s invasion of Poland on Sept. 1, 1939, Roosevelt’s holidays took on a darker tone, and his wartime Christmas words to the nation reflected the tension in his mind and heart.

Lighting the National Christmas Tree that year, the president opened with gloom, not good cheer. “The old year draws to a close,” he said. “It began with dread of evil things to come and ends with the horror of another war.” Twelve months later, frustrated by isolationist opposition to U.S. intervention, Roosevelt was equally bleak. “Sometimes we who have lived through the strifes and the hates of a quarter century wonder if this old world of ours has abandoned the ideals of the brotherhood of man,” he said. Afterward he welcomed the crowd to return in 1941 – “if we are all here.”

For most of us, Christmas is a time of summing up and looking back; it is no less so for our wartime leaders. Their Christmastime words offer an unexpected window into their hopes, their self-delusions, their fears and their genuine convictions. Today, on another wartime Christmas Eve, the history of how presidents have used the season to frame the battles of their times may help us understand where we are as the conflict of our own era unfolds.

This year, struggling with how to move ahead in Iraq, President Bush chose to be simple and straightforward at the tree-lighting, asking for the nation’s prayers for our troops and leaving it at that – the safest course at a moment when he seems uncertain about what course to take on the ground. For the president, it may well be that for now, there is certitude only in prayer. “At this time of year, we give thanks for the brave men and women in uniform who are serving our nation,” he said. “Many of those who have answered the call of duty will spend this Christmas season far from home and separated from family. … We will keep them close to our hearts and in our prayers.”

Warm words, but not epic; he was, for Bush, somewhat humble. Perhaps the occasion brought out a different part of the president, the part that believes so deeply in the faith that traces its origins to Bethlehem.

Sixty-five Christmas Eves ago, on the South Portico in 1941, with Churchill at his side, FDR declared: “Our strongest weapon in this war is that conviction of the dignity and brotherhood of man which Christmas Day signifies. … Against enemies who preach the principles of hate and practice them, we set our faith in human love and in God’s care for us and all men everywhere.”

For a nation at war, whatever our politics or our religion, it remains an ageless message.